Last few days in Jerusalem

Well, it's been a great ride here in Jerusalem. I've done a lot of really cool things, and I'm glad I had the opportunity to be here. This will probably be my last post while I'm in Jerusalem. I wish I could have posted more, but hey I'll have plenty of time to post again once I'm back in the States. I'm only in Jerusalem once. I hope to come back here someday, but who knows? This may be the last time I see this beautiful country.

Today is Tuesday, November 30, and I leave for the States on Saturday, December 4. It's a crazy thought that soon, I will be able to eat fast food and other American food, have consistently hot showers, have a vehicle, have a cell phone, be with family and friends, studying for my last semester as a graduate student.

Those are some of the good things. Some of the things I'm not necessarily looking forward to is the freezing cold weather, not being able to have touristy things to do all the time, not living in a city that has shaped the world, not being with my friends here in close community, learning different cultures and studying archaeology.

It's important to always remember the past, live in the present, and look to the future. Right now a season of my life is coming to close, one in which I was blessed by God to live in the place where He lived. I have been blessed to have studied under the professors here, and I have been blessed to meet the people here who have shared these experiences with me. It has been a great season in my life.

Now, I'm beginning to look toward the future. I am looking forward to the Christmas season, I am wondering what jobs will be opened up or searched out, and I am ready for it. I finished all my work here, and I have one exam to take. Since it is in a subject that I love (Rabbinical Thought and Literature), I think I'll do fine on it. Basically, I'm already getting ready to go home.

I went to a 24/7 prayer house today. As I was there, I prayed that I would be able to remember the lessons learned here in Israel and apply them. As I go back to life, I pray this again.

As for all my devoted readers, keep reading if you want. I'll be posting more of my thoughts soon! Can't wait to see you all!

Jordan

Last night we got back from an amazing 4 day trip to Jordan. We covered most of the important sites (except Pella- I was pretty disappointed we didn't get to go there). I took about 300 pictures, so I will try to just pick a few and give you some of the details.

This trip was more of a tourist trip than all of our other trips. Since we only had 4 days in Jordan as opposed to 4 months in Israel, we had to pack everything touristy to see in Jordan in this trip and see the biblical sites as well.

I love the culture of the Middle East. The only thing that I don't love is the culture of the tourist spots. Everything is Americanized. It's like the difference between meeting some nice people who are relaxing and grilling out and meeting a salesman who wants to sell you a vacuum. Tourist spots just aren't as real as the rest of the places. They are still fun though. Here are the pictures!

Ok, so this was not in Jordan. I was sick for a couple days and had some free time, so I played hearts. I've been trying to get a perfect score for a while now, and finally did it!

In Jerash, the pillars were amazing. There will be more pictures of the pillars coming up, but I loved this photo.

This is the King and Queen. The Jordanians love their royal family and pictures are up of them everywhere. They have done a lot for the poor and needy families.

Here I am at Jerash surrounded by pillars. This was like a meeting place, and there was a stone in the middle where people would give speeches.

The Cardo street. Cardo means heart, and the Cardo street means that it is the heart of the city. This is the most important street in the city of Jerash. On each side, there would be shops. This is from the Roman times.

Another picture of the cool pillars

Here we are at the Jabbok River. This is the professor of our class. He is about to tell us the story of Jacob wrestling with God. It happened here, or somewhere close to here, as he was walking to meet his brother Esau.

This was at Petra. Esther here is standing in the place where you are supposed to stand to ask the gods for forgiveness. I find it fascinating that almost every culture feels the need for forgiveness, and each one goes about it in sometimes similar, sometimes radically different ways. No need to go into comparative religions here, but the concept in Christianity is both similar and radically different than other religions as well. By the way, Esther here has that big of a smile almost 24/7. I've never met someone who smiles as much as she.

Here I am at Petra. This place was simply amazing. Oh yeah, and if you recognize it, you might be thinking of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Jealous? You should be.

This bridge was at Petra. Not very sturdy. There's Dan and his wife Paula in front of me, two really good friends of mine here.

Dan and I ran up tonnnnnnns of stairs. It was ridiculous. At the end of these endless stairs (that makes sense, right?), there was nothing. I mean, it was a good view, but we were expecting something awesome. Surely they would tell us before we walked up a thousand stairs that nothing was up there, but no. They didn't. And we were fairly disappointed.

This is again at Petra, after we ran up another huge flight of stairs. This time, though, we reached a cool monastery, which is the next picture.

This is the amazing monastery carved into the rock. Yep, this place is simply amazing.

Wow. This is the view of the Arnon canyon. It's breathtaking, fo shizzle.

This is a picture of all the girls on our trip.They are my good friends, and I am sad we won't all be taking any more long trips!

 Here is all the guys. We have had a great time!

These next couple weeks will be basically only writing papers. Most of us are really behind on our papers and need to catch up. Also thrown in there is trying to see as much as possible (and possibly taking a trip to Mt. Sinai) before we leave in less than three weeks. Wow, less than three weeks. I will really miss being here, being with my friends here. It has been a great experience in every way.  I'll save all that mushy stuff for another blog, but all that to say that it will be an insane three weeks. In fact, it's going to be an insane couple of months. And in May, I will graduate from Seminary which will be insane. I've said insane far too much, so I'll end it there.

I love you all! Can't wait to see most of you soon!

Jesus Walk

Well this is a long overdue post about my latest adventure this past weekend. I and 4 of my friends did the "Jesus Walk." The Jesus Walk is a hike from Nazareth to Capernaum. It is about 37 miles. Our goal was to traverse it over 3 days. It was my first hike ever, and I loved it! Here is what happened in the form of the pictures we took.

First, let me introduce the group. From left to right, it's Jason, me, Lis, Stacy, and Hans. We took this picture when we were in Nazareth. It was the beginning of our adventure!

Now to each person individually. This is Lis' excited look.

This is my excited look as well.

However, we soon walked about a million billion stairs getting out of Nazareth, and I decided that Stacy should give her "exhausted" look. Here it is.

(On a related note, The Bible says that some people didn't trust Jesus because He was from Nazareth, and nobody of importance comes from Nazareth. I decided that it wasn't because nobody important was in Nazareth, but it takes so much work to get out of Nazareth that nobody ever leaves.)

 Hans said that something was annoying, and so I told him to give me his annoyed look. He didn't understand what I said, but he looks annoyed that I'm talking to him anyway.

There was a sheep sitting in the back of a truck, and Jason pointed it out, so I told him to give me his "I just saw a sheep" look. He did a fabulous job, I thought.

Here is possibly my favorite photo of the trip. It is a mosque in Nazareth. The clouds were great for pictures that day/night.

 

We went to Cana the first night, and stopped to sleep in an olive grove, much like this one. This was actually the second night we were there, but it looked basically the same.

 

While in Cana, we picked up a small bottle of wine and some bread. This was our Sabbath Communion meal. It was a great experience! It was in rememberance, of course, of Jesus turning water into wine. Sabbath meals always consist of lighting candles and thanking God for giving us the sustenance for the day.

 

 This was in the ancient synagogue of Arbel. Lis and Hans climbed the pillars.

  

This was a picture we took before the cliffs of Arbel.  We are about to sorta climb up the cliff and then go down a different way. It was a lot of work, and we wanted a good picture before we did it!

 

Unfortunately, we didn't have any food for the entire day. It was Sabbath and everything was closed. So we got up to the cliffs and found a Visitors Center open selling snack foods. So the only food several of us had on that day of hiking was cookies and ice cream. At least we had water!

These are the cliffs of Arbel. We climbed down these on nearly empty stomachs, with pain all over our bodies, and ready to enjoy the Sea of Galilee!

 

Unfortunately, most of us never made it there. Lis had to go and sprain her ankle on the cliff. We had to help her back up, and then Stacy and I went to the hospital and back to Jerusalem with her while Hans and Jason continued onto Capernaum.

 We had a good group, and we had a lot of fun.

One of the games we played was picking movies or tv shows and deciding which of us would be which character. We did the Lion King, and decided that Hans was the Father lion and I was little Simba. So we re-enacted the scene where he lifts Simba over the cliff.

 That's it for the pictures. It's been a few days and Lis' ankle is very swollen, and the rest of us are also slowly recovering. The highlight was probably Communion with the Cana wine and bread. Every Friday here at school we do Shabbat (Sabbath) meal on Friday night, so it was special to be able to celebrate it even though we weren't going to be there with the rest of our classmates.

As for the rest of life, we have several papers due in the next three weeks, and all of us are behind on them, so the rest of my time here will be very busy. I may not get much time to blog, but I will try. I come back to the States in about a month. It is a sad but good feeling. Jerusalem has become somewhat of a home to me and my friends like family. I thank God for this opportunity.